xxiv PREFACE.
Last, but not least, I feel obliged to express my thanks to my publishers and printers. ‘To the former they are due for the spirit of enterprise they have shown in undertaking, unaided, a publication of this kind, and for the free scope they have allowed me as regards its extent.
From Messrs. Grupert AnD Rrvincton I have received every assistance in carrying out the typographicel arrangements which seemed to me to be best adapted to the purposes of the work, notwithstanding the extra difficulties which the use of a lerge variety of special types has necessarily involved.
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The alpine surroundings amidst which I write these lines, and with which I shall always associate the recollection of the greatest part of my labours, help forcibly to draw my thought to the local bearing of the work now concluded.
From the high mountain plateau which my camp once more occupies, almost the whole of Kasmir lies before me, from the ice-capped peaks of the northern range to the long snowy line of the Pir Pantsal,—a little world of its own, enclosed by mighty mountain ramparts. Small indeed the country may seem, by the side of the great pleins that extend in the south, and confined the history of which it was the scene. And yet, just as the natural attractions of the Valley have won it fame for beyond the frontiers of India, thus too the interest attaching to its history far exceeds the narrow geographical limits.
‘The favours with which Nature has so lavishly endowed “the landin the womb of Himalaya,” are not likely to fade or vanish. But those manifold remains of antiquity which the isolation of the country has preserved, and which help us to resuscitate the life and conditions of earlier times, are bound to disappear more aud more with the rapid advance of Western influences.
Great are the changes which the last few decennia have brought over Kasmir, greater, perhaps, than any which the country has experienced since the close of the Hindu period. It is easy to foresee that much of what is of value to the historical student will before long be destroyed or obliterated, It is time to collect as care- fully #8 possible the materials still left for the study of old Kasmir and its earliest records, I have spared no efforts to serve this end, and in the result of my lebours, T hope, there will be found some return for the boons which I owe to Kasmir.
M. A. STEIN.
Mona Mare: 18th May, 1900.
